


A Bentley For Your Thoughts

by gallifreytrash



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Idiots in Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, crowley fixes a car
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24234814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreytrash/pseuds/gallifreytrash
Summary: "The Bentley hadn’t been running very well lately, Crowley thought, driving home from a little temptation. That would mean he’d be spending some time in the garage. "Crowley fixes his car, and he invites Aziraphale over for some company, banter and lovesick idiocy ensues.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	A Bentley For Your Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> (be forewarned, i don't know that much about fixing cars, and this is also beta'd by me so mistakes are all my fault)

The Bentley hadn’t been running very well lately, Crowley thought, driving home from a little temptation. That would mean he’d be spending some time in the garage. 

Despite never paying for a dollar of fuel since the car came into his possession, and to boot, keeping the Bentley road-worthy through sheer miracles, Crowley found solace in learning to fix his beloved car. Since the Armage-didn’t Crowley and Aziraphale had been watching their miracles, should Heaven and Hell choose to intrude once again. Because of this limit, the Bentley actually had to be maintained in the human way, and seeing as the good old thing had been going for almost 100 years, Satan knew she needed a lot of fixing. 

Crowley had made it his task to learn how to care for the car, he already kept his plants in check well enough, and the car wasn’t even alive (or, should he say, FULLY alive, he still wasn’t sure if the car was sentient or not). Besides, he didn’t technically have a job anymore, so working on the car passed the time.

He drove the car into the garage he had (guiltily) miracled into being when he made his decision to take up mechanics. He got out of the car and went to the main room to retrieve his notes on certain maintenance techniques. On his way back to the garage, he gave a passing threatening look to his plants, and saw the telephone out of the corner of his eye. He had a thought. He moved over to the machine, pressing the button for speed dial and waiting for the dial tone to cease, giving way to a familiar voice.

“Crowley? Hello my dear, how are you? What do you need?” The angel said, a cheery air to his voice.

“Hi Aziraphale, r’you free?”

“Well yes, I can be if you need me to be.”

“I was just about to do some Bentley maintenance, wondering if you could lend me a hand or two? I hear you angels are good at helping” Crowley could hardly resist teasing the angel, even slightly.

“Erm, well yes I can come around. Be there in a jiff.”

“Jiff? We’re using that now? Oh well, see you in a bit then?”

The angel made a slightly annoyed noise that sounded a bit like an affirmation, so Crowley hung up. He didn’t really need a hand with the Bentley, but he was a demon, and who was he to stand in the way of a temptation? Besides, he liked being in the angel’s company. 

**

About twenty minutes later the angel walked through the door of the flat.

“Traffic? Which office was responsible for that? Ridiculous…”

“Hello to you too angel.” Crowley replied, a smirk creeping its way up his face.

“Hello my dear. You must know, I don’t really know how to fix a car-“

“Well yes, I figured considering you can’t even drive- oh shit, Aziraphale you can’t wear that!” Crowley interrupted, pointing at Aziraphale’s coat, the one Crowley had miracled paint off of just a few weeks ago.

“No? Well then I’ll take it off.”

“Well I mean white’s hardly ideal for this job angel,” a perfectly devilish idea came to the demon, “I’ll get you a shirt.” 

Crowley left Aziraphale in the parlour, a surprised look plastered on his face. It was too easy. He walked over to the bedroom, and the thought occurred to him that this was quite cliché of him, this whole affair… Oh well, he banished the thought. Hadn’t he been responsible for the cliché in the first place? He could hear the screaming middle-aged men in cinemas all over the world, shouting at the screen as fingers itched to write negative reviews about the half-assed writing of a once-revered director just thinking about it. 

He rifled through his chest of drawers until his fingers found an old shirt. It was a Queen shirt, of all things, from a concert he went to when he was bored and while Aziraphale was entertaining the idea that Crowley went too fast for him (he had most certainly not cried during Love Of My Life, anyone who tells you different is lying). He freed the shirt from the drawer and went back to the angel, dropping it into his hands. The angel quite obviously tried and failed to wipe the shocked look off his face.

“Er- are you sure it’s alright to wear this, my dear?”

“Would I have given it to you if it wasn’t?”

The angel squeaked and made his way to the bedroom, presumably to change.

**

Aziraphale re-emerged a minute later to find Crowley absent-mindedly flicking through his astronomy book. He had taken off his coat and glasses, and, more importantly, he had rolled up his sleeves. A thought occurred to the angel that he wasn’t sure that he’d ever seen Crowley’s forearms (except when Aziraphale had inhabited his body, but wasn’t that different?) and thus this sight had him quite taken aback. First the shirt, and now this? Crowley really was quite cruel asking him here…

**

“Well, come on then.’ Crowley beckoned, quickly taking in the rather odd sight of the angel.

Aziraphale had replaced his coat, shirt and bowtie with the rather obnoxious Queen shirt. It was very different from any other outfit Aziraphale had picked over the millennia, and it certainly didn’t match with his pant and shoe choice. The angel had, on second look, also miracled it, cheeky bastard, to be a little bigger. 

“Aziraphale, aren’t we supposed to be watching miracles?”

“Crowley, have you seen your own figure compared to mine? You may be taller, but your clothes are never going to fit me in the same way as they fit you.”

“Ah well, I’m sure Gabriel won’t mind.” Crowley had hit a sore spot, he wasn’t going to push the point any further.

“Come on then.” He said, beckoning for the angel to follow him to the garage.

**

Upon arrival in the garage, Crowley went to retrieve a box of tools. Aziraphale still had a rather shocked look on his face.

“S’matter angel?” Crowley asked as he gathered all the things he needed.

“Well, it’s surreal isn’t it? That you actually have to do all this now.”

“I s’pose it’s like your taxes, you don’t have to do them, but you do ‘em anyway, and you do ‘em well. It’s kind of calming anyway, she’s done a lot for me, isn’t it time I paid her back?”

Aziraphale nodded, a smile creeping across his face.

“What?” Crowley asked, annoyed.

“It’s a rather nice thing to do, don’t you think?” 

“Urg…” Crowley groaned, clearly Aziraphale wasn’t afraid to tease back.

“Do you really need me here?”

“I always need you here” Crowley retorted in a far softer tone, half-joking, half not.

“Crowley, maybe you spent too much time in Heaven.” 

So, Crowley thought, the banter really was starting up.

“Couldn’t get out of there fast enough to tell you the truth, but, to answer your question, not really.”

“Crowley....”

“What? I get bored, I figured you’d only be shoo-ing off customers, and maybe I will need a hand, who knows?” 

Crowley raised an eyebrow in indignance and set himself to work, popping the hood of the Bentley.

(Crowley had had to make at least a few adjustments to the car once the pair had decided to limit miracles. These were a bit more necessary than the garage. The Bentley ran out of fuel rather quickly, unfortunately, and it also didn’t run very efficiently on modern fuel. He had also made some changes so the car would take more common, modern parts. It had hurt him deeply to besmirch the Bentley in such a way, but he had convinced himself that such changes were necessary)

His first task was changing the oil of the car. He set to work as Aziraphale sat on one of the workbenches.

“How long have you been doing this then, fixing the car yourself?” the angel asked.

“Not too long. Didn’t think I’d ever have to do anything like this, but seeing as we’re limiting miracles, and the Bentley’s pretty old...” he turned to the car, an apologetic look flashing across his face, “looking good on it though.” He rushed, patting the side of the car affectionately.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested in investing so much time into hard work.” Aziraphale said, the polite tone never leaving his voice.

“Excuse me! I wouldn’t dream of avoiding hard work!’ Crowley said sarcastically as he emptied the freshly unscrewed oil filter, “Besides, it’s either doing the hard work every once in a while or buy a new car, and that’s not happening.”

“Fair enough I suppose.”

The pair sat in silence for a second before Crowley, clearly quite bored by the silence, spoke up.

“Would you mind putting some music on? There’s a cassette player there.” Crowley gestured loosely to a very dusty machine on the bench next to Aziraphale with one oily hand, “Just grab a tape from inside.”

Aziraphale got up and did so, choosing Crowley’s Velvet Underground tape. He slotted it into the player and pressed play. The song that played was not the one the two of them wanted, but one they should have expected. Crowley groaned as Freddy Mercury started to sing We Will Rock You.

“Oh, for Satan's sake, the one thing I can’t fix…”

“I think it’s rather endearing, don’t you think?”

“There’s only so many times you can hear Queen’s entire discography.”

“Well, clearly you enjoy it enough to go to a concert.” Aziraphale joked. 

The angel had him there.

“Well there’s a lot of temptation to be had in a mosh pit isn’t there?” Crowley asked rhetorically.

Aziraphale chuckled, the bastard.

“Come here then, make yourself useful,” Crowley beckoned to the angel, having moved on to replacing spark plugs. The demon held out the old ones, “would you mind grabbing me two more of these? Over there, second drawer from the top.”

Aziraphale moved over to the drawers and retrieved the plugs dutifully, placing them in Crowley’s upturned hand.

“What did you mean by the ‘I always need you here’?” The angel asked. 

‘Shit,’ Crowley thought, ‘me and my big mouth, again.’

“Well, do I need to clarify? We’ve been on the Earth since the Beginning, it’s not so easy to befriend humans when they die before you get to know ‘em. You’re my only friend.”

“Friend?” Aziraphale asked.

“Well… yes, we are, aren't we?” 

Of course Crowley had always wanted more than that, he’d never stopped wanting more ever since Eden, but he was convinced Aziraphale wanted nothing of the sort. However, if the demon had looked beyond his own feelings and used those good old fashioned demon senses, he might have noticed the presence of jealousy whenever Crowley looked at someone too long in Aziraphale’s presence. That might have been a dead giveaway.

“...yes, yes we are…” Aziraphale finally choked out, after much hesitation.

Crowley had killed the conversation, as usual. His face burned red, luckily he was hunched over the car in such a way that the angel couldn’t see. 

The rest of the time Crowley spent fixing the car passed by slowly, he really hadn’t had much to do in the first place, so he tried to finish up to end the ridiculous tension.

Closing the bonnet, he grabbed a rag and started cleaning his hands. He turned to look at Aziraphale who actually looked quite upset.

“Well, I was going to thank you for sticking around despite my blunders at starting a conversation, but I think the more pressing question now comes back to ‘are you alright?’”

“Yes, yes of course,” Aziraphale replied, trying desperately to sound somewhat genial, ending up sounding rather blunt.

“Angel come on, don’t be ridiculous, you think I don’t know you well enough by now?”

The angel shook his head, then sighed rather loudly as if he were at war with himself, eventually he said,

“Alright, but I might need a drink…”

“Best news I’ve heard since ‘I can come around’ this morning.” 

Crowley’s attempt to lighten the situation having failed miserably, he threw the rag onto the bench and led the now openly upset angel to his sofa. With the angel safely deposited, Crowley walked off to the cellar. 

“Stupid. Fucking. Idiot.” Crowley swore at himself under his breath. 

Didn’t he know better than to bring their relationship into question? How many times had he pushed the point too far and pushed Aziraphale away? How many times did he have to suffer before he just let it go and accept that he would never get any further than companionship?

**

Aziraphale was having very much the same regrets in the other room. Why hadn’t he just left when he had the chance? Now he’d upset Crowley and made him feel uncomfortable. Angels weren’t meant to be selfish, so why couldn’t Aziraphale stop being selfish?

**

Crowley returned with a few expensive bottles of French wine and two glasses. Aziraphale hadn’t moved, a stormy look plastered on his face.

“Angel,” Crowley asked, pouring a glass for them both, “what’s wrong?”

“I rather think I'm going to regret this…”

“I mean, you don’t have to if it’s that-“

“Well no, I do,”

“Alright then angel,” Crowley said in that low voice that betrayed the softness he’d been harbouring since he Fell.

“Crowley, I love you.”

Crowley’s face instantly reddened and his jaw dropped in shock.

“Please, let me finish?” The angel asked.

Crowley nodded loosely as though his head was no longer firmly fastened to his neck, and squeaked in affirmation.

“Right, well, thank you. What I mean to say is this: I love you, and so I can’t keep doing this. I can’t stand the constant tip-toeing around what we are because if you don’t feel the same way, I might need some space my dear, if that’s quite alright. I need to know if there’s anything here or if you’re just teasing me, whether you’re doing your job or if you actually want to spend time like this, because it’s tearing me apart.”

Crowley couldn’t help but laugh. He felt horrible about it but he just couldn’t help it. The angel looked absolutely shattered.

“Right. Right then.” Aziraphale said, cold, hard anger coming through and rising up. 

“Fuck, no, angel wait!” Crowley shouted after the rapidly rising angel. 

Aziraphale was storming out the door. Crowley had really fucked it up now. With a snap of the angel’s fingers, his original shirt and coat were back and he was gone.

Crowley ran to the Bentley, he had to fix this now. He gunned it straight to the shop, which was firmly locked. Throwing the doors open, Crowley rushed in. Aziraphale was nowhere to be found, Crowley searched the shop to no avail, but he had a fairly good idea of where the angel might be.

A short (and very fast) drive later, Crowley arrived at St James’. Sure enough, Aziraphale sat feeding the ducks (despite the fact that it was almost 11:30 at night and they should have been asleep somewhere).

“Aziraphale.”

The angel turned, he wasn’t angry anymore, but he was clearly very upset.

“Um, well, you see, I kind of fucked up.”

“Really?” Aziraphale responded, sarcastically (that was new)

“No- er, will you let me explain?” Crowley asked, still standing behind the bench and wringing his hands compulsively.

“I suppose that would be the angelic thing to do…”

“Right, well um, you see, I laughed because I’ve been thinking the same thing as you. I think, bullshit, I know, I love you too. I have since Eden, and I’ve had the exact same problem about not knowing if you felt the same our whole time here, on Earth. It’s just that I always thought you’d never love a demon, I just hoped and tried to bury my own damn feelings and tell myself I was wrong. I didn’t mean to belittle how you feel at all, I was just shocked and so happy that you’ve been feeling the same way. I s’pose we really are a bit thick, eh?”

It was Aziraphale’s turn to laugh now, albeit nervously. Crowley stood, completely mute.

“A tad thick I suppose, yes. Quite sorry I overreacted my dear. Things have been awkward for us lately…” the angel said

“Yes, mostly down to my progressively more useless attempts at small talk to avoid any kind of conversation about us.” Crowley said, gesturing awkwardly in a way that resembled the act of strangling something rather than anything else.

Aziraphale turned around slightly, nodding for Crowley to join him on the bench.

“Come on then, stupid old snake.”

Crowley, much to both Aziraphale’s (and his own) surprise, made no complaint at the insult and sat.

“Sorry for being cruel.”

“I was about to apologise for much the same thing my dear.”

“What now?”

“Well, maybe I can help you with the Bentley more often?”

Crowley laughed, this time receiving a smile from the angel.

“Of course, maybe I can teach you to fix it for me eh?” The demon joked.

Aziraphale handed Crowley a slice of bread for the ducks.

“Maybe we should let the poor things sleep?”

“You really are being nice tonight, how very out of character.”

“Oh shush. Your place or mine?”

“The shirt you gave me was comfortable, if I must admit…”

“Well then, mine it is. Come on then angel.” Crowley said, getting up.

The demon offered a hand to Aziraphale, helping him up from the bench and leading him to the Bentley. The car started without a hitch, no creaks or splutters or any kind of complaint. It also drove smoother than usual. If Crowley hadn’t have known better, he might have thought the car had wanted this to happen… but no, cars aren’t sentient, they most certainly can’t be wingmen, and if they happen to play romantic music after confessions of feelings it’s only coincidence, of course.

**Author's Note:**

> i haven't written anything in a while, so hopefully you enjoyed it and it wasn't too dodgy... thanks for reading !


End file.
